#fiction #paperback #contemporary #family #antarctica #bestseller #funny #contemporaryfiction #mariasemple 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Oregon

A Novel

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

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C. Hope Flinchbaugh

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Dreaming of attending Shanghai University despite the treatment she receives from those who look down on her for being a woman and a Christian, nineteen-year-old Mai Lin embarks on a journey of personal triumph. Original.

Daughter of China

cd56a659-1e52-42ff-94ae-fba2f0977c74-1

Sopan Deb

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

California

A poignant, heartwarming, and charmingly funny debut novel about how a discovered box in the attic leads one Bengali American family down a path toward understanding the importance of family, even when splintered.

Shantanu Das is living in the shadows of his past. In his fifties, he finds himself isolated from his traditional Bengali community after a devastating divorce from his wife, Chaitali; he hasn't spoken to his eldest daughter Mitali in months; and most painfully, he lives each day with the regret that he didn't accept his teenaged daughter Keya after she came out as gay. As the anniversary of Keya's death approaches, Shantanu wakes up one morning utterly alone in his suburban New Jersey home and realizes it's finally time to move on.

This is when Shantanu discovers a tucked-away box in the attic that could change everything. He calls Mitali and pleads with her to come home. She does so out of pity, not realizing that her life is about to shift.

Inside the box is an unfinished manuscript that Keya and her girlfriend were writing. It's a surprising discovery that brings Keya to life briefly. But Neesh Desai, a new love interest for Mitali with regrets of his own, comes up with a wild idea, one that would give Keya more permanence: what if they are to stage the play? It could be an homage to Keya's memory, and a way to make amends. But first, the Dases need to convince Pamela Moore, Keya's girlfriend, to give her blessing. And they have to overcome ghosts from the past they haven't met yet.

A story of redemption and righting the wrongs of the past, Keya Das's Second Act is a warmly drawn homage to family, creativity, and second chances. Set in the vibrant world of Bengalis in the New Jersey suburbs, this debut novel is both poignant and, at times, a surprising hilarious testament to the unexpected ways we build family and find love, old and new.

Keya das's Second Act

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#hardcover #fiction #romance #botm #relationships #family #contemporaryfiction 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New Jersey

The Sweetest Remedy

#hardcover #fiction #bookofthemonth #botm #contemporaryfiction #paperback 

Illinois

From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook--made into the Academy Award-winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper--comes a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero--everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas's backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves.

From Matthew Quick, whose work has been described by the Boston Herald as "like going to your favorite restaurant. You just know it is going to be good," We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that life is full of guardian angels.

We Are the Light

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#hardcover #fiction #friendship #new #wahala #nikkimay #bipoc #contemporaryfiction 

District of Columbia

"An incisive and exhilarating debut novel following three Anglo-Nigerian best friends and the lethally glamorous fourth woman who infiltrates their group-the most unforgettable girls since Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha"--

Wahala

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Tayari Jones

Wisconsin

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage “A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones’s skill for wry understatement never wavers.” —O: The Oprah Magazine “Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I’ll never forget. This is a book I’ll read more than once.” —Judy Blume With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Silver Sparrow

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Jennifer E. Smith

South Carolina

An indie musician reeling from tragedy and a public breakdown reconnects with her estranged father on a week-long cruise in this "pitch-perfect story about the ways we recover love in the strangest places" (Rebecca Serle) from bestselling author Jennifer E. Smith. Greta James's rise to indie stardom was hard-won. Before she graced magazine covers and played to sold out venues, she spent her girlhood practicing her guitar in the family garage, full of big dreams and determination. Her first fan was her mother, Helen, who always encouraged Greta to follow her heart. But her father, Conrad, was less supportive; he saw only a precarious road ahead for his daughter, and always pushed her to make more practical choices. Greta has spent her life trying to prove him wrong. And she's succeeded beyond even her own wildest dreams. But a week after her mother's sudden death, and just before the launch of her high-stakes sophomore album, she completely falls apart on stage. The footage quickly goes viral, and she stops playing, her career suddenly in the exact kind of jeopardy her father always predicted. Months later, Greta--still heartbroken and humiliated and trying to find a way back to her music--reluctantly agrees to accompany Conrad on the week-long Alaskan cruise her parents had booked to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. It could be their last chance to heal old wounds and forge a new relationship in the wake of such loss. But the trip will also prove to be a voyage of discovery for them both, as well as for Ben Wilder, a historian also struggling with a major upheaval in his life. As Greta works to build back her confidence, and Ben confronts an uncertain future, they find themselves relying on each other to make sense of life's difficult, unexpected choices. In the end, Greta must face the biggest challenge of all: can she find a way to listen to the song within her while also making peace with those who love her?

The Unsinkable Greta James

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”[A] charming, funny, touching, and relevant comedy.” —The Boston Globe “A provocative yet sweet romantic comedy.” —People, Best of Fall 2020 This warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love—she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through. Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person—someone you didn’t see coming.

Just Like You

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Missouri

"Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a run-down motorhome, flunking out of school, and picking up shifts at the local diner. But when April realizes she's finally had enough-enough of her selfish, absent father and barely surviving in an unfeeling town-she decides to make a break for it. Stealing a car and with only her music to keep her company, April hits the road, determined to live life on her own terms. She manages to scrape together a meaningful existence as she travels, encountering people and places she's never dreamed of, and could never imagine deserving. From lifelong friendships to tragic heartbreaks, April chronicles her journey in the beautiful music she creates as she discovers that home is with the people you choose to keep"--Publisher's description.

The People We Keep

51c07147-ce97-46b0-9905-233dcca45d7b-1

Andrew David MacDonald

Pennsylvania

Indie Next Pick for February 2020 Book of the Month January 2020 LibraryReads January 2020 Pick Bookreporter New Release Spotlight New York Post “Best Books of the Week” Goodreads “January’s Most Anticipated New Books” The Saturday Evening Post “10 Books for the New Year” PopSugar “The 18 Best New Books Coming Out in January 2020” Book Riot Best Winter New Releases A heart-swelling debut for fans of The Silver Linings Playbook and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Sometimes life isn’t as simple as heroes and villains. For Zelda, a twenty-one-year-old Viking enthusiast who lives with her older brother, Gert, life is best lived with some basic rules: 1. A smile means “thank you for doing something small that I liked.” 2. Fist bumps and dabs = respect. 3. Strange people are not appreciated in her home. 4. Tomatoes must go in the middle of the sandwich and not get the bread wet. 5. Sometimes the most important things don’t fit on lists. But when Zelda finds out that Gert has resorted to some questionable—and dangerous—methods to make enough money to keep them afloat, Zelda decides to launch her own quest. Her mission: to be legendary. It isn’t long before Zelda finds herself in a battle that tests the reach of her heroism, her love for her brother, and the depth of her Viking strength. When We Were Vikings is an uplifting debut about an unlikely heroine whose journey will leave you wanting to embark on a quest of your own, because after all... We are all legends of our own making.

When We Were Vikings

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#hardcover #fiction #contemporaryfiction #bookofthemonth #botm #family #drama #life 

"How do you hold onto hope in a difficult time? In the small city of Wharton, Connecticut, lives are beginning to unravel. A woman loses the love of her life. A son struggles with addiction. A widow misses her late spouse. A husband betrays his wife. At the heart of these interlinking stories is one couple: Freddie and Greg Tyler. Greg has just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a brutal form of cancer. He has never been dependent or weak, and wants to overcome this the way he has succeeded at everything else: through grit and determination. But can Greg fight his illness? How will Freddie and their daughter cope if he doesn't? How do the other residents of Wharton learn to live with loss and to find happiness again? A debut that pulls at the heartstrings and immerses readers in a community, A Little Hope broadcasts the joy and hope to be found in the everyday acts of loving, forgiving, and surviving"--

A Little Hope

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Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young but life is catching up with them. 'They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Beautiful World, Where Are You

Katherine Arden

Mississippi

A novel inspired by Russian fairy tales follows the experiences of a wild young girl who taps the mysterious powers of a precious necklace given to her father years earlier to save her village from dark and dangerous forces.

The Bear and the Nightingale

68205aaa-a0cb-4515-9c51-487e2c0da585-1

Julia Langbein

A brilliantly funny debut novel that follows a writer lured to Los Angeles to adapt her feminist mermaid novel into a big-budget action film, who believes her heroine has come to life to take revenge for Hollywood's violations.

"Brilliantly sharp, funny, and thought-provoking, the gripping story of a woman trying to find her way in our chaotic world." --Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe

Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist novel American Mermaid becomes a best-seller.  Lured by the promise of a big payday, she quits teaching and moves to L.A. to turn the novel into an action flick with the help of some studio hacks. But as she's pressured to change her main character from a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay; siren calls lure Penelope's co-writers into danger.  Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood's violations?

American Mermaid follows a young woman braving the casual slights and cruel calculations of a ruthless industry town, where she discovers a beating heart in her own fiction, a mermaid who will fight to move between worlds without giving up her voice. A hilarious story about deep things, American Mermaid asks how far we'll go to protect the parts of ourselves that are not for sale.

American Mermaid

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Lee Woodruff

"Lee Woodruff knows how to get to the heart of the matter on every occasion."
--Alice Hoffman

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed.

Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes.

Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an unforgivable secret. Pete senses a gap growing between him and his wife but finds it easier to escape to the bar with his friends than face the flaws in his marriage.

Meanwhile, Maura's parents are dealing with the fault lines in their own marriage. Charismatic Roger, who at sixty-five, is still chasing the next business deal and Margaret, a pragmatic and proud homemaker, have been married for four decades, seemingly happily. But the truth is more complicated. Like Maura, Roger has secrets of his own and when his deceptions and weaknesses are exposed, Margaret's love and loyalty face the ultimate test.

Those We Love Most chronicles how these unforgettable characters confront their choices, examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other. It takes us deep into the heart of what makes families and marriages tick and explores a fundamental question: when the ties that bind us to those we love are strained or broken, how do we pick up the pieces?

Deeply penetrating and brimming with emotional insight, this engrossing family drama heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

New York

After the tragic death of her 9-year-old son at the hands of her 17-year-old neighbor, Maura Corrigan is swept away in a devastating aftermath of secrets and betrayals that force her to question everything.

Those We Love Most

55eb47fe-2c0f-47ed-92af-7954670f67b8-1

#hardcover #fiction #newrelease #contemporaryfiction 

Perfect for fans of Maria Semple and Jennifer Weiner, this smart and witty debut novel follows Ramona through the forty-eight hours after her life has been upended by the discovery of her husband's affair and an approaching Category Four hurricane.

Ramona's got a bratty boss, a toddler teetering through toilet training, a critical mom who doesn't mind sharing, and oops--a cheating husband. That's how a Category Four hurricane bearing down on her life in Savannah becomes just another item on her to-do list. In the next forty-eight hours she'll add a neighborhood child and the class guinea pig named Clarence Thomas to her entourage as she struggles to evacuate town.

Ignoring the persistent glow of her minivan's check engine light, Ramona navigates police check points, bathroom emergencies, demands from her boss, and torrential downpours while fielding calls and apology texts from her cheating husband and longing for the days when her life was like a Prince song, full of sexy creativity and joy.

Thoroughly entertaining and completely relatable, None of This Would Have Happened if Prince Were Alive is the hilarious, heartwarming story of a woman up to her elbows in calamities and about to drive off the brink of the rest of her life.

None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive

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#hardcover #newrelease #botm #fiction #debut #contemporaryfiction #janeausten
Read this only once! Jane Austen retelling. #romance #summerread #lawyers

Don't miss the beach read of the summer! A heartwarming and hilarious novel about swinging, marriage, and complexities of the heart.
 
"This book is fun as hell. Hilarious, addictive, moving, and sexy. I lost track of time reading it, and I couldn't get enough!" --Jasmine Guillory, bestselling author of While We Were Dating

Georgina Wagman has it all--a great marriage, a great job at a prestigious law firm, and great friends. She's living the life she always wanted, and everything is perfect. Until, that is, she walks in on her husband Nathan in a compromising position with a junior associate. Georgina has a moment of crisis. But divorce is not a part of the five-year plan, so she comes up with an idea to save her marriage and recapture the spark. She and Nathan are going to become swingers.
 
Georgina isn't going to embark on this adventure alone, though. Her friends Felix and Norah and their respective partners decide to tag along for the ride. They've got relationship woes of their own that swinging just might fix. Georgina, convinced Felix and Norah belong together, is thrilled. What better place to reignite romance between two people destined to be together than a swingers' party? Her plan is foolproof, until she runs into a college ex at the first party. When they reconnect, Georgina will find herself torn between her head and her heart, with her very happiness hanging in the balance. Perfect for fans of Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella, The Lifestyle is a playful homage to Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse and an outrageously fun summer read.
 

The Lifestyle

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Read the kindle version never opened the physical. 

Florida

Julie Otsuka

North Carolina

From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool--a tour de force of economy, precision, and emotional power. The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief. One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline. Written in spellbinding, incantatory prose, The Swimmers is a searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss: the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master.

The Swimmers

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When the sex-positive start-up she cofounded becomes a sensation, Naomi Grant's responsibilities shift from the bedroom to the boardroom. She wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing, but higher ed won't hire her. Ethan Cohen was recently named one of the city's hottest bachelors by LA Mag, and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. But the temple is low on both funds and congregants, and Ethan has three months to turn things around or else the doors of his synagogue will close for good. Naomi and Ethan co-host a seminar series on Modern Intimacy, and their growing attraction puts them to the test. -- adapted from back cover

The Intimacy Experiment

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#fiction #drama #jodipicoult #contemporary #crime #shooting #thriller #contemporaryfiction

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Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

C. Hope Flinchbaugh

Daughter of China

Sopan Deb

Keya das's Second Act

Jane Igharo

The Sweetest Remedy

Matthew Quick

We Are the Light

Nikki May

Wahala

Tayari Jones

Silver Sparrow

Jennifer E. Smith

The Unsinkable Greta James

Nick Hornby

Just Like You

Matthew Quick

We Are the Light

Allison Larkin

The People We Keep

Andrew David MacDonald

When We Were Vikings

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope

Sally Rooney

Beautiful World, Where Are You

Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale

Julia Langbein

American Mermaid

Lee Woodruff

Those We Love Most

Carolyn Prusa

None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive

Taylor Hahn

The Lifestyle

Sally Rooney

Beautiful World, Where Are You

Julie Otsuka

The Swimmers

Rosie Danan

The Intimacy Experiment

Jodi Picoult

Nineteen Minutes

Ethan Joella

A Little Hope